Track By Tracks: Hitman - The Offering Side 1 (2018)

This one starts the album off with a bang. A quick drum fill leads into a ripping riff and we’re off and ready to go. It’s the shortest and most up-tempo song on the EP. The guys had initially made a bunch of rough recordings for me of different new tunes they were working on when I (Jordan) wasn’t able to make it to that day’s practice. This one jumped out at me but they said they didn’t have more to the song and couldn’t think of where the song should go from there. I wanted to keep it short and sweet; a banger! It grabs you and gets you into the EP right away. Thematically, I like that people can find their own meanings to certain lines or songs, so although I wrote these lyrics, I don’t want to force a certain interpretation onto people. Generally speaking, this one is about doing what’s right for you and not following others expectations of what they think your life should be like. It’s about being true to yourself and standing by those that are important to you so they can be true to themselves in return.

2. Under the Weight:

This is the oldest song on the EP. This one came together as an amalgamation of different riffs and parts from everyone in the band. I had a couple riffs I had been sitting on for a while that I had intended on using in my previous band but it just never quite came together. I showed the guys in Hitman those riffs and they melded perfectly with stuff they had been working on independently. This one is about flaws in the system. It’s about people destroying the planet. It’s about the almighty dollar being more important than the well-being of people as a whole and our continued survival in this world. This one has always sounded like it had a little Corrosion of Conformity influence in it to me so I threw in the lines, “Reminiscent…Lines corroding…Make the guilty pay” as my little homage to COC.

3. Nero:

The guys had this pretty much finished for a little while but I was slow on coming up with vocals. Often, when this is the case, the guys will threaten that if I don’t come up with lyrics soon, they will write them themselves about something ridiculous. All you have to do is search out Corey Quotes on Facebook (Corey is the six-string slinger in the band) and you’ll get a glimpse into what some of our songs could be like. Anyway, Corey said this one was going to be about werewolves if it was up to him. Sometimes I’ll take their initial ideas and try to flesh out some ideas that might give a little more depth and meaning to the lyrics. So after doing a little research I found that stories of werewolves date back to ancient Rome and to a man named Petronius who was a courtier for the emperor, Nero. This lead to a little more research into Nero and some of the depraved things he is said to have done, like burn martyrs alive in his garden during his lavish parties just to provide mood lighting, or how he famously fiddled as Rome burned, or how it’s said that he had his own mother killed. Given his tendency to act on some of his more base and cruel instincts, I had the chorus of the song written as though it’s coming from Petronius’ point of view, likening Nero to a werewolf after seeing first-hand some of things he had done.

4. Enchanted Wizard/ Hail the Outro:

This is another one I was slow to come up with lyrics for so the guys started to write a chorus of their own. Mimicking the melody of the guitar riff, over the chorus they sang, “Enchanted Wizard, pray for me”. So with that in mind, I tried to draw on some stoner rock influences and write about a wizard. That’s pretty much the gist of this one. Although I did end up re-writing the chorus, Corey and Coutts were able to keep the lines they had written, using them in the last chorus, underneath what I had newly written. Everyone wins. On a side-note, Hail the Outro was intended to be part of a complete song about a badger that eats people, but that song never came to fruition. We dug the riffs that we ended up using for Hail the Outro and will often play that little tag as an outro to our live sets. We wanted this EP to really convey the energy and what it’s like to see us play live. But who knows? Maybe I’ll have to re-write a song about a man-eating badger in the future.